Will Arnett

The First Team review: football sitcom hits the post

New comedy series from the creators of The Inbetweeners fails to score big laughs.

The second series of this comedy about a hopeless salesman (played by co-creator David Cross), has been hanging around for two years before finding a home on FOX. It's nowhere near as good as its excellent line-up of stars.

The superb Will Arnett (from 30 Rock) makes a brief appearance and Sharon Horgan is woefully under-used. Mad Men's Jon Hamm also turns up in a cameo role. It's very chaotic and silly, and contains some ill-advised rape "gags" that should never have reached the screen.

Ronna and Beverley must be hilarious live, because that's surely the only way they managed to bag a Sky Atlantic chat show that can pull in guests of the calibre of Jon Hamm and Will Arnett. Despite the duo's best attempts at outrageous sexual humour, this lukewarm comedy offering ends up being as shocking as an announcement of delays on the Northern Line. In spite of attempts to sex her up, Sue Perkins remains well within her comfort zone. And the X-rated revelation they bamboozle Will Arnett into: 'I have never had sex with Will Smith.' In between guests, one of their skits sees them upset unwitting Women's Institute members by talking about blowjobs. Isn't good comedy only meant to skewer people in positions of power?

Sky comedy is hitting its stride, but this vehicle for Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo's bickering Jewish matriarchs feels like a sideways step. The comic chat-show is fast resembling a dead-end format, it's a schlep at an hour and the so-so line-up for this opener doesn't help. That said, there are a few belly laughs, and kudos to the hosts for making an old pro like Frank Skinner look truly uncomfortable at the sex-obsessed, scatalogical line of questioning. Dirty old cove Charles Dance, meanwhile, positively revels in the prurience, and Alfie Boe looks shellshocked when he isn't hooting with bewilderment. The ad libs are delivered with more conviction than the scripted stuff (and enough with the 'outrageous' Holocaust gags), but there's certainly something to work with here; the prospect of Will Arnett next week is delicious.

Ricky Gervais to appear in The Office USA season finale

Ricky Gervais and Will Arnett have been confirmed to appear in the season finale of The Office.

I had hopes for The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a new US sitcom starring David Cross (the bald one in Arrested Development) as an incompetent, deluded bluffer who, to his astonishment, is mistaken for a sales genius and gets sent to open a UK office for the launch of an unpalatable Korean energy drink.

It had a promising start. The boss (Will Arnett, the unsuccessful magician and womaniser in Arrested Development) was encouragingly sociopathic; there was an amusing scene in which Todd demonstrated his grip on reality by explaining to his cat that he had to go away but would be leaving a month's supply of tuna in the washing-up bowl ("Don't eat it all at once, all right?").

But events in London felt a touch understaffed, too loosely handled, too dependent on Todd's calamities: a mishap trying to get the lid off a jar using steam, a controlled explosion involving his suitcase, an uproarious... um, sales pitch. His blag started to flag. Sharon Horgan (of Pulling fame) was fine as the molecular cook with a heart of gold, but the script neglected her comic gifts. Likewise, Blake Harrison (the tall, thick one in The Inbetweeners), as Todd's factotum, had little to do except laugh loudly at the unfolding hijinks. If only I could have joined in more often.

TIPDOTM really ought to be pressing the buttons. It's got the cast (David Cross, Sharon Horgan, Will Arnett) and the prestige but, two episodes in, it's sorely lacking gags and sympathy for its protaganist. As an American selling toxic Korean energy drinks, Todd could be a new Tobias Bluth for Cross - but he's more annoying than amusing. Never a great sign for a character. There's too little nuance here, and giving him a pregnant working-class neighbour with a penchanct for White Lightning doesn't help on that front.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret flashes back from its protagonist in the dock, facing a list of farcically extreme charges and dressed (I think) as a jockey. This is, after all, a sitcom co-written and starring the American comedian David Cross from the absurdly underrated and sadly short-lived Arrested Development, one of the funniest, most ingenious TV sitcoms of recent years.

He plays a hapless lackey from an American corporation mistakenly chosen to front a sales campaign for a corrosive energy drink in the UK. It's a standard fish out of water scenario in which our idiotic anti-hero wrestles with a culture he knows nothing about while hopelessly trying to impress an attractive café owner played by Pulling's Sharon Horgan.

The basic gag is that, in an effort to mask his inadequacies, Todd continually digs holes for himself with a torrent of preposterous lies. Cue slapstick farce and Gervais-esque cringe humour (it's co-written with Shaun Pye who appeared as Gervais' nemesis in Extras) which, although well performed by the gifted Cross, often feels forced and underwritten.

Though spottily amusing, it's a disappointment overall, especially given the track record of Cross and Will Arnett, a fellow Arrested Development alumnus who cameos as Todd's monstrously priapic, foul-mouthed boss.